Labor relations is a vital aspect of HR management, that involves building and maintaining positive relationships between labor unions, organizations, and their employees. Ever wonder how you can maintain these relationships while scaling your business, and remaining compliant with laws and regulations? Labor relations software is specifically crafted to assist organizations in effectively managing their interactions with employees, labor unions, and various stakeholders. With numerous software options available, it can be challenging to determine the optimal choice for your organization.
In this blog, we’ll delve into the essential factors to consider when looking for a labor relations software to help your organization navigate the complexities of labor relations requirements and maintain positive relationships between labor unions, the organization, and its employees.
Before you begin assessing what type of labor relations software your organization may benefit from, it’s helpful to identify your organizations specific needs and objectives; what aspects do you want to improve? Are there processes you can streamline for better communication and cross-departmental visibility? If we look at one of Sodales’ customers Coca-Cola BIG, they wanted to improve their employee experience by having an integrated focus on its digitization, while continuing to ensure policy and regulatory compliance. With Sodales’ effective implementation, Coca-Cola BIG was able to standardize their employee processes with a flexible, future-focused approach.
If you’re looking for a labor relations software that can enhance efficiency, maintain or improve compliance, and foster better relationships between your organization, its employees and labor unions, keeping reading for some tips to keep in mind.
Features and functionality
Your organization may have a platform that provides your employees with a learning tool; a second platform that manages grievances; a third platform that manages employee engagement and satisfaction; a fourth platform that manages reports and analytics; and a fifth platform to manage collective bargaining agreements. That sounds like a lot. Why not streamline these processes into one central platform that manages it all?
The point of implementing a labor relations software is to streamline processes, reduce the time and effort required for tasks such as grievance tracking, contract management, and employee scheduling. A labor relations software like Sodales for Enterprise Health, Safety and Employee Relations can help labor organizations efficiently track and manage grievances, collective bargaining agreements, disciplines, job bidding processes and more to ensure they are addressed promptly and fairly. With Sodales, stakeholders can easily share data and collaborate on key decision-making in one integrated platform, providing a consistent and efficient focus on employees.
Integration
Choose a system that can seamlessly integrate with your existing HR and payroll systems, as well as other tools your organization utilizes for managing employee data. Real-time integration plays a crucial role in enabling organizations to meet quick demands and enhance overall operational efficiency, to create a better work environment. It is essential for organizations to have a well-functioning labor relations software to address health, safety and employee relations effectively as we progress into a digitally advanced world. Case IQ listed 11 powerful benefits of employee relations software, one of these benefits being integration with an organizations HR database. They explain that data entry can be time-consuming, so to save time for managers that have to oversee many employees, and manage multiple incident, grievance, or complaint submissions, integrating with an organizations core HR system will automatically fill an employee’s relevant information, saving them valuable time.
Now let’s talk about how Sodales is the perfect labor relations platform, especially when it comes to integration capabilities. Sodales comes with a robust built-in integration hub. This integration hub supports encrypted integration flows (Iflows), for not only processing interfaces at the data level, but at the process level. Some of the most common integration scenarios with our platform are with employee master data, learning management systems, performance systems, time-keeping systems, service management systems, payroll systems and more.
Automation and workflows
Continuing on the point above, consider a labor relations software with features that can help streamline processes such as grievances, job bidding, and contract management (i.e., collective bargaining agreements), with automation. Auto-populating employee information ensures that information is inputted correctly. In instances where grievances are filed by an employee, automation will ensure that the submission is routed to the correct party, and that relevant parties are aware of status updates, and progress for filed grievances and more.
Compliance and security
Another key feature to consider for a labor relations software is that the software complies with labor laws, or provides your organization the means to comply with labor laws and data security regulations. As labor laws and regulations are always subject to change, it is important to ensure that your labor relations software can allow you to quicky adapt to local, state, and federal laws, as well as industry-specific regulations. Failure to comply with any regulation can result in penalties and costly litigation.
When an organization implements Sodales’ software, they can seamlessly manage their compliance and governance across multiple locations; whether you have an office in Canada, India, Germany, or Australia or anywhere in the world, Sodales provides the means within each module to comply with any country’s regulations. Sodales’ solution is built for complex compliance matters that extend beyond just general human resources inquiries. Compliance with labor laws is essential for protecting the rights and well-being of employees, and keeps organizations accountable as they must adhere to fair labor practices, including minimum wage, overtime, leave, and other employment standards.
Reporting and analytics
You also want to consider a labor relations software that includes robust reporting and analytics tools, to help your organization track labor relations metrics, monitor trends, and make data-driven decisions. According to McKinsey & Company, data-driven approaches are revolutionizing how organizations optimize their work processes. When an organization uses this data to make decisions, it demonstrates their active efforts to meet or exceed the confidence of their employees.
Many of Sodales’ customers in the transportation, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors are utilizing Sodales’ reporting and administration tools to review and update workplace policies and procedures to ensure they remain compliant with changing laws, conduct regular audits, and analyze these reports to determine the effectiveness of these rules to make continuous proactive improvements.
Communication, collaboration, and transparency
Caroline Forsey explains that “employee relations cannot be successful unless employees feel there is a level of transparency from management.” By incorporating the features and practices noted above when considering a labor relations software, your organization can facilitate open communication, foster collaboration, and enhance overall transparency within your labor relations processes. When an organization provides their employees with the ability to access dashboards that measure key labor relations metrics, quick access to their collective bargaining agreements, and the ability to submit and track grievances, employees can garner a feeling of trust from their employer.
Get started with a demo.
Taking the time to choose the right solution and implementing it effectively is crucial for your organizations success. Sodales has considered all of these key metrics and more when building its software. Sodales understands that each industry, country, and organization have their own requirements, so by identifying your own needs and which aspects of labor relations your organization needs to improve, you can choose a labor relations software that aligns with your requirements.
Sodales provides organizations with the means to connect health, safety, and employee relations into one centralized and digitized platform, to downstream business processes, and help organizations efficiently manage compliance and maintain a positive workplace culture. Sodales enables process level integration across employees, HR leadership, operations, customer service, unions, external auditors, and regulatory bodies.
To learn more about Sodales’ labor relations software and to book your free industry-specific demo, click here, and someone from our team will be happy to connect with you.
